


Do you laugh while Screaming

by Absinok



Category: Dishonored (Video Game)
Genre: Adult Emily, Aged-Up Character(s), Alternate Universe - Role Reversal, Canon-Typical Violence, God!Corvo, Human Outsider, Introspection, M/M, Prompt Fill, Royal Protector!Outsider
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-08
Updated: 2016-10-02
Packaged: 2018-07-22 05:57:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 21,552
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7422583
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Absinok/pseuds/Absinok
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Raven doesn't remember what it is to have a name.<br/>The Void is the only time he knows. But there is more, he wants to know.<br/>And his marked ones allow him to understand, once again, what it feels to be human.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Another prompt fill! you're welcome. I gOT WAAAAAY too carried away on this one  
> champagne, cheers and slow clap to the ones who recognize the song references not very hidden. good luck! if you get it right you earn a drabble/snippet/whatever just a short thing
> 
> So, The Raven = Corvo.
> 
> anyway [here's the prompt](http://dhkinkmeme.tumblr.com/post/127176225002/pairing-corvooutsider-details-role-reversal)

The Raven is young, both in term of physical age or time as a deity. He is young, he is new to the Void who transmits all he needs to know. He knows some were chosen younger. He knows he comes from a human. Some of the Void's other representatives did, too. Some did not. He also knows he is not supposed to have any clue about his former life. 

The others didn't, and he shouldn't have.

He remembers the fall. The sound. The pain, however, fails to register. He remembers other kinds of pain, but not this one. Then, there is only the emptiness that is a constant for The Raven.

The Void erases all these memories.

\-------

The Raven doesn't remember what it is to have a name. His own washed away over time, leaving only the title the First Humans gave him. He no longer remembers the time before the Void either.

(But the waters which didn't drown him, the rocks at the bottom of the cliff he hit, The Raven can still picture them _very clearly_ ).

Now he starts at the silence, at the blank he cannot fill, at the burning desire of self destruction. This extension of existence is not quite anything he wanted. But then, this isn't much about him.

The loss of his identity was felt so keenly when he became the Void he did not really stand it. His own first years, he does not really feel anything but hollow, and this constant strain that is not really pain, not nearly enough but still too much. He spends them shouting. 

He screams, but the Void does not answer; for he does not have a voice.

He is unstable, too much for the humans who cower at his face and he unintentionally carves such a deep fear in their heart that they banish every mention of his name and destroy every fragment of his power. The ravens, the altars, the bones, they all burn the same in giant pyres and he screams at the loss, he screams at them but they no longer hear him and it is all like dying but a thousand times over and over and **so much worse** but still standing without anything, devoid of anything that used to make him who he is.

His power is so reduced he can no longer appear to them.

When he learns how to stand loss, he stops screaming. The ravens eventually come back, more runes and bone charms are created and he is completely silent for the first time in his first years.

The next human doesn't hiss and pray for him to go away, doesn't slit his own throat or yell so The Raven imagines it must be an improvement (though the human's mind never recovers from the Void). He goes back, and does not scream at the First Humans.

\-------

At first, he counted. The first hundred years, or a millennium or two. There is no telling how time passes in the Void, or on Earth, or even within himself. But the three timelines are different, that is for sure.

The point is, after counting he came back, and forward, then back again. He doesn't count anymore. He knows where his end is, so time doesn't mean much. The Void isn't affected by it. 

\-------

He knows his end, but he does not know **the end**. The day of the Black Sun, he used to hear so much about it _before_. The day where the Void will take back everything, destroy all existence and material thing. Everything that isn't part of it already.

_“And on this day, there will be no Light. On this day, the Sun will shine black and the shadows of the Void will come for the world. None will be spared, for the Void is cruel, hungry and insatiable. This day will mark the end of the world as we know it.”_

Perhaps it is only a legend. The Raven should know if such was to happen.

Or should he? The Void's representative ought to see everything, see forever. The beginning, however, he is unable to watch. Perhaps the end is also hidden from his sight.

As far as he goes, forth and forth, forward until he can no longer recognize _anything_ in the world with how much it has changed, until he feels lost by the evolution of technology and the amount of cults **(he wants to destroy them all)** , there is no end. 

He keeps going until he suddenly can't anymore but this isn't **the end** because it is just another time with nothing particular. He sees nothing. He does not understand why, after this day. Is there any reason why he cannot see past this day, when it is obviously not an end or a beginning or _anything at all_?

The Raven knows his sight is limited, but the reason is beyond him.

_(It isn't supposed to be.)_

The Void never tells why. Perhaps, it can't.

_(Perhaps, because it isn't satisfied.)_

\-------

If the end is restricted, the beginning is completely inaccessible.

He sees the past unfold, but everything that is before his death eludes him. Perhaps it would create a paradox, if he changed events in the past that would impact his human life. Things would not occur in the same way, and he wouldn't end up in this place. The past is shielded, and he cannot touch it.

It's annoying, this connection to a human he hadn't been in a long time. It's irritating, to realize he is only granted a certain window of time, when _everything_ is supposed to be in reach.

It does not take long for The Raven to realize he is not an appropriate vessel, and the Void resents. Something went wrong and he did not quite turn in what he was supposed to.

The Void is not satisfied.

\-------

The Raven tells himself it doesn't matter, and almost succeeds in convincing himself. 

(But how could he really, when he is much more than his human appearance, much more than the birds and the sky, more than the Void and much much less. Everything belongs to it, including himself. And he is much much less powerful than the Void. He is the Void, but he isn't.)

He doesn't really want to see the past anyway. He knows he was a human before merging the Void, but there is nothing more. He doesn't care. Or, he doesn't want to remember. Why should he? He isn't even close to anything he used to be. It does not matter anymore.

He _dreads_ (and shouldn't, shouldn't even feel dread) the idea of witnessing his human self.

He does not see everything. He does not see forever; and he prefers it that way.

_(He is not supposed to!)_

The Raven knows his end will come, and he knows exactly when. The Void is true to its representative, as much as it harbor a grudge against them. He does not look forward (perhaps it will be simpler, not being inadequate), but neither does he wants to avoid it. It will simply happen, it is a fact, there is no use in bargain. 

Still, The Raven does wonder how is the lack of existence. If he will join the silent souls the Void swallowed; if he will simply disappear. Probably the latter. He doubts the Void will want him here after.

But he **wants** something before.

\-------

The Raven is out of time. The Void does not follow any restrictions, and certainly not the ones the humans call “physic laws”. He navigates around, takes one point and claims it the present, and from there observes the past and the future. Goes back, and forward. Back again. Changes what he has done _(he is not supposed to interfere directly with the mortal world)._

He is out of time, but not out of reach for when the Void will want him gone. It only seems logical his end is not a fixed point in the future (at least the future from where he is currently looking).

\-------

When he meets them for the second time, the First Humans see him through the birds. He appears as a blue crow, its eyes a black abyss, and the name remains. He speaks to the minds, for the ears do not listen and doesn't mention destruction. He flies through their skies, and only shows to a few.

Yet the First Humans still hate him, think him malicious, despite how he tries not to make them fear and ruin him again. They curse him, and burn the ravens for the second time (though the amount of birds to fall is minor, compared to the first time) but never can they catch the Void's vessel. 

In retaliation, The Raven drowns an entire continent, letting the hungry waters claim their earth. He leaves only a few islands which get the names of Tyvia, Morley, Serkonos and Gristol.

The continent of Pandyssia, the place where he lived, is untouched except for a cliff that breaks down and collapses.

(The rocks covered with blood belong to the ocean now.)

Some consider it a sign, coupled with the fact that waters spared them. Pandyssia is one of the only places where, over the years, most respect him but are too smart to worship him. Many of them conclude their continent has a link with him, but rare are the ones who search for it. The Raven doesn't allow them to discover his origins.

On the contrary, the humans of the islands fear him. They completely stop interacting with him. The minds close, and the Void no longer has a voice, for the ears cannot hear.

The Raven decides not to go back to the First Humans again.

\-------

Over time, a particular cult spreads on Pandyssia. They adore the Void, want his power. They worship him, pray for him. They perform odd rituals, smear birds with blood (but not crows, for they can no longer be caught). The cultists settle for magpies, which are apparently 'close enough' and have the advantage of not being protected by the Void.

The Raven gives them nothing, nothing at all. Still, they sacrifice so many in his name. Bird, fish, the species does not matter. Then they move onto humans. They dress them up and lay them down on altars before slitting their wrists and collecting their blood.

He destroys them all, without any exception, after the first. He has waited enough. He **will not** allow this.

Hate is not something that is carried out in the Void.

But desires remain.

\-------

It does not take long for The Raven to realize he really does not like being worshiped. He despises any who do, and if he didn't knew better, would also hate them. Why would anybody worship him, he does not even understand. He is the Void, but the Void is foreign, yet familiar. He is a god, but he isn't really.

He is everything he shouldn't be, he has many limits and he does not inspire fulfillment. The only thing he could evoke is wrongness, unfinished work.

Sometimes, he wants to start screaming again. But losing his mind once was not a pleasant experience, and turned very dull after a certain time, when he no longer had any link with anything else than the Void; and it is pretty clear his link with the Void is already flimsy and severed.

He is not an appropriate representative. 

(The Void does not want its current deity. It was not supposed to keep any link with its human self. It was not supposed to want, especially not after being out of time.)

He remembers men pushing him off a cliff. He wished he could fly, as he was rushing towards the ground, solid and unforgiving. He wished he never gave his trust to the men. His rage against the cultists burned, and burned. He had been gullible. They betrayed him, all for religious beliefs. Just for this, he wished their stupid ritual succeeded and he would get access to a long afterlife, to get back to them. He knew he wouldn't get it but he wanted. **_Revenge_**.

The Void erased this memory, but it keeps coming back and nothing goes well, as everything else.

The Raven is not half of what he is supposed to be. There are pieces of him scattered everywhere, and he can never be whole. He can never function properly. He is hollow, but there is no purpose to fill him, to keep him going.

Gods should not hope for self-destruction. But he is not really a god.

(The Raven hopes his end doesn't take too long to come. He is tired)

\-------

The first to see him in the Void turn away. They scream long and loud, they shriek and they screech desperately while trying to claw their eyes out, and _they just don't stop_ ; so he has to push them out. The Raven guesses he must look frightening. He hasn't seen his face in… a long time. But he knows he fell head first. He doubts the result is anything but horrifying.

He tries, but every human he brings in the Void fall into madness and there is nothing he can do to prevent it.

Some start to hate him, and more, more than in this past consider him destructive but it is nothing new so he ignores it. He cannot understand why the few he chooses to contact cannot stand it.

He stops appearing as anything else than the blue crow with eyes as black as the Void. He stops showing the face he had in death. It doesn't help. Most humans are tainted by the Void's influence, and change drastically after The Raven contacts them.

He understands his power is too much. Or is it his mind that is unbearable, and the representation of it throughout the Void? Is it his presence, that is toxic?

The problem resolves itself when The Raven finds how to lend some of his power. The few chosen receive special abilities, and their unbreakable link with the Void makes them more resistant. The Raven cannot help but wonder if, by giving them any connection to him, he does not ruin them. He never finds the answer.

\-------

His marked ones are so interesting sometimes. They make strange choices, only they have the power of the Void, so their choices have consequences far far beyond them. Some hate him when they realize what they have done with their own hands, because of his mark. He is used to it. There were always some to hate him, even during his former life, even when he wasn't wronging anybody.

He completely abandons the ones who curse him; who blame him, who cannot look far enough to understand _it was all them_ and he only gave them a push in the right direction, _they would have done it anyway_.

The broken ones though, they never stop being fascinating. The ones who finally notice and wonder _what have they done_ and wonder _why have they done that_ and want, just want desperately to fix the mess they've created. The guilty ones, he never stops speaking with. The ones who understand the price they paid for the mark. They always understand too late, but it makes all the appeal in watching them, knowing how low they can sink.

So many ask favors from him. Most of the time, he complies because there is no entertainment, no aim in watching someone simply break. He gives them just enough that they can continue by themselves. And it always is so funny, how it brings back the recollections that **should not be there** , that should have been erased. It is always funny, how he learns again how it feels to be human by watching his marked ones.

The Void hates it, more than anything else he does, The Raven knows. He should not spare a second thought at who he used to be, he should not try to be similar to the ones he watches.

But he cannot separate himself from this human he was. He cannot forget his past life, so he acts on it. He has never been a proper representative anyway.

The Void twists in anger, threatens to banish him.

But this time, it is The Raven that doesn't listen.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> uh yeah i decided to make one chapter by each marked person so yeah that's it.
> 
> btw if by any chance the person who made the prompt find this do tell me! i'd love to thank you for your wonderful prompt.

Vera Moray is young. Young and beautiful, but most of all she is angry. Resentful. Far too passionate to accept the way her life turned. To bask in the nonexistent comfort of an arranged marriage with a man she has never known before and she doesn't want to, even if it is for her own benefit. She doesn't love, and she is so so bitter. She has money, she has fame but it is not enough.

Even after many years in the court, she can't manage to be happy. Though she is one of the most prominent nobles and she wouldn't be if she didn't marry Lord Preston Moray, she can't manage to convince herself it wasn't a terrible mistake to accept.

The Raven comes to her, curious. He doesn't understand why she is so unsatisfied, why she wants to be anywhere but with her husband. She's the idealistic type, and also the stubborn type. She will keep searching for a way out, and should it take her whole life it wouldn't matter. She wants an exit, and perhaps she isn't even conscious of that fact because she doesn't have any.

So The Raven provides one, on a time where Vera is out of her city, in the ground where he once walked. She doesn't know, of course. But she learns foreign customs so fast, and perhaps if he knew her husband would tell her she's getting too invested in legends. But he doesn't see, so Vera learns from the Pandyssian, the way they revere a god that nobody heard of in centuries. She learns how to build an altar, with glowing blue stones and branches. She leaves a feather and a fine blade on.

He doesn't need any incentive to come to her anyway. He wants to know her strong mind, her frustrations. He wants to learn how passion fuels her. 

She hates all her suitors, he believes. She always hated them. She measured them all, but she was smart, too smart not to notice. They wanted, not her. Her money. Her favor. Her body. Vera hates men who want.

(But he is not quite a man.)

When the mark is carved on her bones, all of them, she smiles and smiles and he learns what relief is, how it feels when you finally get what you've been seeking. He wishes he could feel that each time he drowns a cultist, just because he can, just because several of them made him fall four millennium ago (at least on Earth. In himself, he doesn't know. He never really does).

Vera drowns in – not his power exactly but it's always so close, when everything that makes The Raven what he is can be used. She carves many, many. In the bones of ravens, he gives. She doesn't keep all, but no other than the ones linked to him can unlock the runes so they get lost (in time or space; Vera's runes are never found). 

She offers some of them to a mute man who comes back, always and start to seek The Raven as well, but for him, the god never comes. 

(The Raven doesn't like Morris Sullivan. He knows his power would be misused in these hands.)

She gives herself in, completely. She spends days and nights carving, drawing sigils. She knows a lot, more than the small abilities he gives her. She draws power from the Void directly, channels it with her rituals; and he lets her. Rare are the ones who are interested in witchcraft, but Vera seems to only want to learn from the Void. She neglects her “duties”, her court influence, everything she once was to devote herself to the Void.

The Raven doesn't understand why she does. How she can. So he tests her, to see how far she can go.

He is not malicious, but he is not a kind god either.

He always lets her speak whenever he appears. He listens to her ramblings, to her projects, and nods when she asks if he feels how she improved her rituals' efficiency. Then, he whispers about carving, how all bones can be used. 

The next time he meets Vera Moray, her husband is no longer with her.

She offers him a rune, bigger than the ones she used to create. The bones are polished, almost shining and The Raven knows, how long she spent on it.

He keeps the rune, and seals his power within.

The Void shakes, threatens to destroy him and everything he is, but it cannot make the artifact disappear.

(The rune enclosing the Void returns to Earth a few years later)

\-------

Vera is passionate and **overwhelming**. She's too much for the deity who has just began to learn again, and she burns, she burns with a fire he does not and cannot understand.

The worst is when this passion is directed towards him and these are the times where he just doesn't answer when she calls. He can't really. He knows he wouldn't quite stand it.

Until he starts seeing strange glimpses, lapses in her usual behavior and he tells himself he is mistaken about them. He hides the truth from his own eyes; but it never really works so he sees Vera falling. But he refuses to acknowledge it. Vera is misguided, and surely she will realize.

But Vera is devoted and **she will just not stop.**

She falls and falls until he cannot ignore it anymore.

_'Do not worship'_

But it is too late, so late because Vera has lost herself and she already does, she doesn't even need to pray for him for her love is consuming and The Raven learns what _horrified_ feels like.

This, he cannot understand either. He does not even want to.

He almost feels disgusted at the idea that she loves him. Of all beings. She should know better. He cannot even ask her why, because she cannot answer. It is so nonsensical.

He completely stops coming for Vera. She calls and calls, and never stop even after many years but he does not answer. Vera was a mistake. Such a huge mistake she trapped herself with half immortality and a delirious mind. She never stops loving and calls him “husband”, “groom” and “love”.

He doesn't really know why he feels betrayed.

The Void hums and hisses on how he mingled too much with humans, he forgot his own nature ; and perhaps it is right.

\-------

When he visits Vera's time again he does not mark her. He does not come for her.

Sullivan never gets his hand on any of his artifacts, and never starts worshiping him. The many runes Vera carved stop existing. In exchange for what he made disappear, The Raven spreads more creations of his own over the Isles and especially in Pandyssia, where he knows they will protect them.

Some ( **too many** ) are destroyed and he feels parts of him breaking, disappearing and it feels – not really pain but nothing else could describe – but the rest of them sing of the Void and hidden power and long, quiet time without anything but the emptiness for company. 

When other humans (whalers, mostly) learn how to create them and offer them to their friends, families – protection from the Void, they say, and surprisingly they are right, for the charms work on all bearers – the Raven doesn't feel too incomplete anymore.

(Strangely, the rune made of human bones doesn't disappear, out of time and out of reach in the Void).


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Umm the next chapter should take maybe a lil more time to come but consider this: the more time, the bigger the chapter okay bye.

_Snap, snap, snap_ the bones make when the Abbey gets ahold of them. Until the bones can't be found anymore and The Raven stops appearing and tongues stop talking. Once in a while, some religious men mention a malevolent deity but they cannot tell anymore how he looks, or his name.

Until he disappears in the minds. They speak of the Void, but not its representative, who is forgotten. He becomes a legend, the blue raven who used to roam the skies like an omen of death – or was it fortune and luck for the ones who lost everything, who seek vengeance? The bird with black eyes who followed some and nobody knew why.

Rare are the ones who believe in him in this time, and nobody is even sure anymore if the Raven really has a link with the Void.

Then the bones make no sound when the Abbey grabs them. They creak, but they do not break. The Overseers study them, watch them but never can they understand. They are heretical artifacts, that much they can tell, but created by whom and for whom?

“Why are they all so different?”

They find altars as well, but nobody in the Isles know how to build one like the Pandyssian people do. It is not surprising. In the continent, they know him, they call on the spirits that live among them. In the small isle of Gristol, he is neither hated nor feared. Simply forgotten. They do not see his name, his face, can no longer identify it. The only thing they have left are small rituals for – they don't know – a Void that will swallow them all.

Some shrines are made of wood, some of tissue. The richest are made of gold. The Raven doesn't appear at them, but he answers when called by his name. It is mostly the most miserable that remember, the ones who are abused and simply wish for a new start, a slightly better life. For them, he answers and he helps, but he doesn't show himself. They pay a lot for their last hope, so the least he can do is to give them a little 'luck'. 

“How come none of them are the same? Do they not pray a common god?”

The Abbey asks, who they believe to be worshiping; but the humans shrug, unable to answer. Old customs, they reply sometimes. Protective rituals. Not for anybody in particular. One fool mentions the Void. He dies three days later, after interrogation. There is no deity, so the Overseers' enemy is the world that created theirs, and that will destroy it back.

Some who are caught mention a blue raven that nobody has seen for centuries and the Overseers shake their heads. “A legend,” they scoff. “There is nothing true about the bird with black eyes.”

\-------

Few believe in his existence. Teague Martin is not one of them.

With a sharp mind and a silver tongue, Martin is a strange Overseer. Many alliances, many connections but he does not act. He waits for his time. He speaks the Strictures genuinely, but his ambition can not work with them.

He meets some of The Raven's worshipers and he laughs and **laughs.**

(So very strange, considering he used to know a certain assassin that was more than rumored to be a heretic, to have strange abilities that help him in his work)

“The blue raven is a myth.” he affirms, so so sure.

Yet he looks so unsurprised when, on a night patrol, The Raven comes flying silently above his head, following until Martin is alone; before settling on his shoulder. Perhaps the color is hard to decipher in darkness? The Overseer must have mistaken him for another crow.

It is the god that ends up confused in the end, stunned by Martin's blasé reaction. He knows exactly who is this raven perched on his shoulder and he laughs and it's all amusement.

“So you do exist.”

The Raven doesn't know what to answer to this enigma of a man, to this odd religious man he doesn't really want to drown like all others. The god finds himself quite lost in the human's presence. And very, so very curious by all his aspiration, by his aims that are so insignificant compared to what a mad man could search, so inconsequential.

Martin wants power, and it's so very common, so very typical for a man.

But it is his means that fascinate The Raven. His many contacts, the information he gathers everywhere until he knows more on some than they know themselves. His permanent seeking of the most effective method.

In fact he is very interested by how far Martin will go. He could easily leave his own mark on the world, but instead his gaze only goes for the Abbey's highest offices. For now.

_'The knife works better with a tongue to guide it. Likewise, the tongue cannot go far without a knife to complete it.'_ he speaks to a perceptive mind, giving an answer that he knows is not quite enough.

Now, the look on the Overseer's eyes is different. Interested, almost keen.

_'I can give you the knife. What do you choose?'_

The question is clear, almost blunt. Does the Overseer want any involvement with the Void? Does he want a power that his Abbey deem heretical?

Martin agrees.

\-------

The Raven rarely comes to see Martin, of course. But the Overseer knows he is watching his moves, every time he acts and grows closer to his goal. The god still can't tell how he feels about the religious man. Very determined, almost power hungry. Dangerous. But not in the same way the cultists used to be.

They don't speak to each other. Martin never enters the Void, and very very rarely sees the blue raven but sometimes there are feathers tucked in his uniform's pockets and he knows the god is watching. Strangely, he almost never uses the mark and The Raven wonders why he even accepted it. Or perhaps it is not so surprising after all. Not much use for the knife when one has a silver tongue as Teague Martin. Though sometimes, lethal force does help his cause.

(But he is never the one to use it)

\-------

It doesn't take long for Martin to raise himself at the top of the Abbey. Though of course, someone else helps his cause. The only time The Raven draws the Overseer in the Void, Martin doesn't stay long. Just enough to hear about an assassin coming and how he should let the path clear.

Martin is smart enough (and yet, not exactly because he doesn't see past anything and he does not understand the consequences) not to go after the assassin who pins Campbell's body to the Interrogation room's wall with his own blade, writing **LYING TONGUE** and **RESTLESS HANDS** in blood above the corpse and escaping without ever being noticed.

Instead, the marked man takes the office by making himself chosen. It has nothing to do with his purity or his special abilities, and everything with his network and his power (both the tongue and the knife). He wears the red coat perfectly and sits in the chair as if he was born to do so, and perhaps looks a bit too satisfied.

That is, until he realizes how the Abbey has crumbled.

\-------

The Abbey almost doesn't recover. Martin starts to believe the assassin wanted more than Campbell's life. The end of the Overseers.

He succeeded, in a way.

This assassin was smart, certainly even more than him who did not see him coming, did not see how much a threat he would be despite The Raven's warning. He used every way he could to rob bits of power to the Abbey, before striking the head and leaving them to rot. The Abbey's influence decreases so slowly they don't realize it until all their significance is lost.

Martin's eyes narrow when he hears report of a blue raven being seen flying through the building the day of the attack, and finally understands he lost the gamble he made with the god. The price of the Mark, he finally discover.

He doesn't break down like the first ones, so he's left with both his hands bound, unable to do much anymore. The Raven stops leaving hints of his presence, and stops watching. The man had grown dull, not even resentful enough to act on his grudge. A shame.

Martin never forgives The Raven for bringing in his own demise, for helping him get his position before stripping him of every tiny bit of authority he had. The Abbey collapses on itself, devoid of anything they used to have. All their prestige, all their leverage, gone.

For the rest of his time, Teague Martin's legacy remains chaos, unstable politics, and faithless times.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I thought i would update faster but then inspiration hit me and well. haha. the longer the wait the longer the chapter lmao.
> 
> beta read by tirrathee (huge thanks)

Emily does not believe in the Abbey. In fact, she lacks many things: faith, recognition, a real family. A better home than a small, empty apartment – heights never seem so far than when you were so close to it. Yet she always seems so fulfilled.

Emily is a bastard, and an artist; albeit not a known one. Rare are the ones who notice her sketches, but they are all over the streets, and masterpieces in themselves. The girl doesn't paint portraits, she shows the wretched and the unpoetical. She depicts the plague and the Abbey's constant search of power, the abuse of the poorest and the misery.

A girl was born is Dunwall, but a girl doesn't have the Gristol mind. Nor a royal one, even though she knows perfectly who her sister (half-sister, their blood isn't exactly the same) is. The empress Jessamine Kaldwin. Emily didn't keep the name. She isn't a Kaldwin per se, but she doesn't know who her mother is, so she is just the anonymous artist who signs all her works.

She travels, a lot, and finds out her art isn't nearly so good in any other place. It is but an excuse. She hates Dunwall, and all its miseries but she cannot just leave. Still, her art brings a good fee, for the rare ones who know are open to give quite a sum for her to continue. Not a lot of course, but more than enough to complete the rest of her income. She doesn't live in royal luxuries. She was never welcome in the Tower anyway. 

Emily gives a hard time to the City Watch, who can never catch – see – her, and to the nobles who are targeted in most of her works. A bunch of snakes, the lot of them. She is committed to the more commons.

Emily writes to her sister sometimes, apologize for the trouble; and though Jessamine knows perfectly who is spreading chaos (but not really because it is only the nobles who complain about wounded pride) through her city, it never comes to her mind to reveal it. She does not exactly understand her sister's motivations. They were never close, never had the occasion to really see each other, but they are family.

The artist hears of The Raven somehow, himself isn't really sure as he doesn't watch all humans at all time. He could come back, but he is not interested in knowing. He has his own suspicions. After all, Emily has drawn masked assassins several times, and the god finds out she has contact with one of them. She picks up all kind of information, and sells it.

Sometimes, in exchange for promises not to end up like murdered nobles, or for materials. Mostly money. It makes up for the work she doesn't have. Street art isn't a booming business, so she had to find something else. She is an outlaw, though there is no bounty on her head since nobody ever sees her.

She does quite well by herself, and nobody really knows where she picks all the secrets, but the sensible man knows who to come to when intelligence is needed. Some say she gets all from the Golden Cat. Some don't think a lot. She has contacts everywhere, from the courtesans to the whalers, from very few nobles to smugglers and witches. From maids to guards, without forgetting the moderately wealthy workers. Even within the Academy. Some see only a young girl, some see Emily. No matter, she always gets what she wants in the end.

Sokolov _hated_ her art – he liked her quite a lot nonetheless, though he didn't quite know who she was –, but he is not the only natural philosopher who paints. One of them was quite pleased to discover she was not a nameless boy (because of course, no women entered the Academy), but _Emily_. He showed her the few he could teach, and started paying her for information on some nobles, and mostly other scientists. Jealous, the lot of them. It works well for her.

She's not so anonymous then, but nobody is stupid enough to mention how all the works of the artist are signed with the name of Dunwall's strange informant. It is no secret she deals with criminals, but a Kaldwin will always have contact within the Tower. Too many alliances to be vulnerable. It is not worth the risk to attack her, her works, her business, especially since she isn't actively being a threat to anybody.

After many deals that made his work far easier, Rulfio proposes her to get in touch with Daud. She refuses. Too independent for that. She can be nothing else than _Emily._

Slackjaw offers a place in the Distillery. She comes back with three numbers, and asks for elixirs in exchange, telling him he should ask for her if he needs more information.

Later, when a group of thugs open the safe, they find many things. Strange ones, but no painting inside.

Emily never really says no, but the answer is clear enough.

Lizzy doesn't propose. She asks if Emily can find if a tailor – member of the Hatters – really sells fake fur. Emily's light boots hardly make any sound when she trespasses. She brings the letter back to the gang leader, and wins her favor as well.

\-------

An exceptional informant finds herself at a loss when it comes to a legend. She searches, she gathers everything she has just by curiosity, but it is very close to nothing. She doesn't even seem to want anything, and The Raven doesn't understand. Many seek him for help, some for power, some for worship. Emily doesn't look out for anything else than a bird. She finds her thrill in the search, in the frustration of not discovering anything, in the happiness of a simple clue.

She asks Rulfio, who cannot really pretend. He can't tell her a lot though. He himself never saw a blue raven.

She refuses to risk asking Daud.

Emily doesn't build a shrine, doesn't know how to contact him so she chooses the simplest way, _her_ way. 

She draws the black eyed crow of the legends, over and over until it looks close enough to the picture she had; until it looks so real she almost expects it to detach itself from the wall and fly (but she doesn't really, because that's a light trick, her most basic technique).

Then she holds the only charm she has had since she was old enough to understand the heresy in the artifact (a Void's charm); for luck – she never knew it concealed her from hostile eyes –, and asks. It is not quite a query, not quite a demand, far from a prayer. A worded wish, with the tone of an order.

He comes to her.

\-------

A god flying above her head, Emily looks amazed and positively happy. Talons close on a painted branch made real, and black eyes lock in her curious ones.

For once, his lack of voice doesn't hinder anything. An artist inquires, so much, and a crow nods or shakes its head. Until she start asking who he is.

_'The Void'_

When Emily lifts her hand, The Raven comes to sit on it and draws an intricate design on the back of it with black ink. A girl looks at the sigil, and understands. A god stares, and there is an unspoken question, a wait for approval, consent. Emily smiles.

Later, she asks his name.

He cannot answer.

\-------

With her paint mark, Emily accomplishes nothing. She uses it, unlike Martin, but she doesn't do anything else than she did before. Her art multiplies as she can now make herself disappear to every human eyes and erase every trace of her presence, but she doesn't do more. The Raven follows her, flies next to her and obeys when she asks him to leave his own mark on her works.

(It is so much easier now, to trespass. To explore every inch of the city, to learn more and more. Dangerously easy. She could become an excellent criminal with her Void's abilities. She doesn't.)

The Raven isn't fascinated by her. Far from it, an artist is common. No, he is insanely curious by the girl who holds power she didn't particularly search for, and makes nothing of it.

And the god hesitates, a lot. He drew Martin to the Void, but only once and the risks for the Overseer's mind didn't matter so much. Martin had already lost, even though he did not see it; not in any timeline did he emerge successful. If he had to meet his end sooner, it wouldn't have been a terrible waste (in this current time, Martin has not lost yet and the Abbey is still powerful and will remain so for half a decade, at least).

It is absolutely out of question that he'd risk breaking Emily by bringing her to the Void. It is quite awful, that he lacks so much experience. Before Martin, nobody has walked in the Void since the disaster with the First Humans. 

But he wants to speak to an artist, speak freely to the open mind as it cannot be anywhere outside of the Void. Emily's isn't narrow – it does not protest at his presence at the very least – but she does not quite understand how he communicates and sometimes words are completely lost. If he had a voice, there would be no need to ask himself so many questions.

If he had a voice, he would talk, and talk so much no matter how strange it would be for a crow to speak. But the Void already gave him its voice, and it cannot help his own physical disabilities.

In the end, he chooses to try, warns her, tries to prepare her to the experience and how traumatic it could be – though he doesn't really have any idea himself – ; and she accept to _try_. An artist teaches him amazement and curiosity in their purest form. She immediately loves the atmosphere, and he doesn't tell her the nature of the Void. Doesn't tell her it requires a representative, that it keeps a while before destroys them and everything they are, and that later, much later, it will destroy the Earth as they know it.

He hates these unspoken lies. Emily deserves to know what she explores. She should not be here. He should warn her. Tell her what the Void really is. He doesn't.

She walks in the Void as if it is a foreign ground and she wants to find out all its secrets. She explains marveling, pleased surprise and discoveries. In exchange, her insatiable mind wishes silently for knowledge, tales of ancient and future times, for a sight of the world.

Perhaps a god is quite too glad to proceed. He speaks of an end, a day like another but so unlike these current times. He speaks of a beginning, the First Humans who built giant pyres and burnt pieces of him until he was so incomplete he could only go back and protect everything he is that they tried to destroy.

(He doesn't speak of **his end** )

He shows her sightings of an old, very old city, four millenniums ago and now, after it has crumbled. She asks where it is, and doesn't look less determined when he mentions Pandyssia.

He doesn't show the cliff swallowed by the ocean and the rocks that bleed red into the waters.

\-------

He ends up showing what he cannot see as well. Emily watches a young street urchin limping through the years. A boy with a stolen sword he doesn't quite know how to use. She sees him and The Raven doesn't, living through what he can get (not much, not enough), taking on small jobs he can barely accomplish (he is weak and he is malnourished, though he **tries** ). 

He wields the sword slightly better now, and goes to dangerous animals to feed himself. He mostly manages, though sometimes he gets seriously injured and it's a miracle the wounds don't fester considering the lack of medical care they get. The boy knows no doctor working for free.

He struggles through life until his twenties. Then, several men find him and take him (willingly but misleading him) with promises of food and shelter if he works for them. They offer him clean clothes, without rips or missing threads; they even bathe him. The urchin wants to refuse but they insist. He does not quite understand why. He hasn't done anything yet. He starts fearing a trap, but he is only a boy without home, without family. What could anybody possibly want from him?

His incapacity to communicate doesn't help.

He truly realizes something is wrong when they offer him rings. No one is so kind. Everything comes with a price, but he hasn't paid anything ( **yet** ). He shakes his head but they press them in his hands and suddenly they don't look friendly at all. They have this terrifying expression. Suddenly, he's quite sure that if he refuses once more, he'll end up with his throat slit so he slides them on his fingers. Doesn't help, they never take their eyes away from him.

He has to leave, leave now and never return. He protests soundlessly and then he fights, but it is already too late. They smack him in the head, and when he wakes he stands at the edge of a cliff.

Emily doesn't see the boy falling, but she screams the scream the urchin without a voice couldn't make when they push him.

The Raven doesn't understand how she sees what he cannot. He does not understand how he can show what is concealed to his view.

He does not understand why the Void… allows such a thing.

\-------

It takes a while until an artist comes back to the Void. She does not really need to anymore, now that she understands The Raven's voice comes from the Void and can only be heard by the mind because it is not meant to be spoken.

Eventually though, Emily walks in a god's world again. She looks tired, and weary. Most of all, she almost look… sad? In his own understanding of this emotion.

(It is not like the dread he feels when he brings her. She tells him it is sorrow. She tells him it is like drowning, but still standing, helpless and lost. He's not sure he understands.)

He wishes for her not to ask.

But an artist is perceptive, too much for her own good, and she doesn't understand how much she can risk in a floating realm that obeys to nothing and no one, so she asks. If a god was human. If he lived in the small Pandyssian town. If he was a sacrificed boy. He knew she would.

Still, an answer doesn't come easily.

This time, the Void spasms at his hesitation, throbs at the intrusion and becomes so hostile shadows start to take all there is in, so he cuts Emily short to bring her back to Earth, out of this malevolent place that shatters on itself, and learns brutal, primal fear by himself at the idea of losing a girl who brings out the only memories he ever had.

\-------

The next time he visits her, Emily apologizes profusely, even though he tells her there is no need.

(He doesn't say that she doesn't have to teach him guilt because he figured it out by himself. He knew such a thing would happen, but he didn't warn her. He didn't tell her not to ask.)

His world is empty again, but for an artist he brings back part of Earth to fill it, to pretend the Void is anything else than what it is. It looks like a haphazard pile of stone, more than anything else, but Emily smiles and it is enough. There is a lot of light now, more than before. Many candles, many lamps that spill a blue glow everywhere the girl looks.

A god explains he didn't always appeared with blue feathers, and so of course an artist doesn't ask (she learns too) but looks so expectant and The Raven is unsure.

_'It is not a good sight'_

She laughs, always so cheery and he-- he does not want to taint her mind. He knows she's seen death and decay and rot and misery but still she smiles so much and it is so genuine, and it is not optimism, he does not even know what allows her to remain so innocent but she is too precious to be ruined.

And he-- he wants to protect her. Her young mind and her smile. Her life and her works. Her, and everything she is.

(He's grown attached. To a human, of all things. It is not love, because he knows love from Vera and that's not it at all but he does not know what it is. He labels it affection.)

_'The First Humans went mad after opening their eyes to the Void'_

“But I didn't. I came more than several times and I'm alright.” she replies plainly.

_'You do not understand. They… screamed at my face. They blinded themselves because they could not stand the sight.'_

He sees oh so well how Emily almost wants to laugh that he's being self conscious but stops herself because she understands he isn't joking, it is a real problem and there is something – not quite worry because he is not quite human (neither is he really a god) but the closest it can be – lying underneath.

She smiles and doesn't make any promises. She doesn't say she won't scream. She doesn't say she won't try to blind herself. _Emily_ only asks “Please” in this particular tone of her that is neither a demand or an inquiry.

The Raven cannot find enough resolve to refuse.

To her credit, Emily doesn't react violently. She doesn't yell, nor does she cry or attempt to remove the sight before her by any mean.

She asks silently and he nods. Her hands find his ruined face (he fell head first). She is so so careful and keeps asking if it hurts until he explains he barely feels anything anymore. His body died once, and it was apparently enough. Still, her touch remains so light.

She doesn't see it but she's frowning as if she's afraid she would break him and he almost wants to laugh because that's exactly what he is already. His body, at least. He doesn't know how to label this feeling, but he doesn't ask.

His own eyes have not functioned since he died; the Void provides the sight as well. A god doesn't really know how far they have been damaged, but Emily's face tells it all. _It is not a good sight_ , is an understatement. His death was not painless nor merciful. It does not hurt at this time, though.

(He tells himself, the dead do not feel and it rings wrong. He is dead, this isn't life, this is a strange half existence but still it feels. He still has physical reactions, but pain is absent. Comfort, as well. As for the emotional reactions, he is learning. He can always pretend.)

His spine isn't exactly straight anymore, and his skin is covered in bruises.

She takes his hands and explains a different kind of horror, the one that isn't coupled with disgust but grief and pity, the one caused by a disaster without name. She explains how there is no repulsion in this horror, only sorrow.

He asks her if she really feels like drowning at this moment, and she says yes.

 _'You're not dying. There are all kinds of life in the Void.'_ is the only answer he can manage, and the lie burns his tongue. Only the dead remain in the Void. She is the only living thing. Life is not meant to stay too long in such a place. The Void corrupts it.

(Still, she looks so untouched.)

“You're not dying either.” she replies, and she always knew so much more than he assumed.

_'Not anymore.'_

“You too, are one of these kind of life.”

There is no possible explanation. No way to make her understand the difference between the living, the dead, and him.

This time, she remains long, very long. There is no time in the Void, and being in, Emily is out of Earth's time. But in himself, The Raven feels and knows she stays much longer than any other times before.

He speaks of affection. He speaks of worry in bringing her here, and he speaks of feeling alive despite being dead for a long, long time. He speaks of an artist that is mortal and that matters in a way he cannot explain. She does not change anything. Barely leaves her mark, except in paintings.

She teaches happiness, to a god that has not lived for a long time. She explains joy, and a whole different kind of drowning that everyone welcomes.

She smiles, and it is more blinding than any sun.

\-------

 _'Where are you going?'_ he asks, more to hear her speak than by actual curiosity. He already knows.

“Pandyssia. I never went to the continent! I want to discover it.”

She isn't exactly on a legal boat. Not many really go to Pandyssia, and the Pendletons ships that bring back slaves aren't allowed – they still find a way, of course. Emily pays a smuggler to get on one of these ships. The crew doesn't know her, but they know who she gave money to so they don't bother her.

The Raven stays on her shoulder during the whole trip and the sailors don't look too reassured to see a blue raven, but some carry charms and some know where they come from. Gristol has forgotten him, but the sailors remember and they fear and respect the Void in both measures, and know better than to cause the wrath of its chosen. Emily gets to Pandyssia safely, and nobody even thinks to go after her.

(The Raven saves the sailors and the Pandyssian natives from the storm that would have destroyed the ships on the way back to Dunwall. Some of the ones who were captured find a ruffle of feathers and they cheer and celebrate the deity, though they do not understand what he has done. They do not need to.)

It is not a surprise when Emily goes to his former hometown. She speaks a lot to the Pandyssian and they like her, respect her as a spirit's chosen. They teach her much, much more than Vera ever learned. Emily learns how to build shrines where The Raven would answer, she learns how to recognize and use places with high spiritual energy, she learns there are many spirits in Pandyssia and how she has to know how to respect them all and live with them all. 

She starts carving, just like Vera, but she is much more experimental.

Many know how to carve in the continent, but not all bones sing. Emily's shine with a dark miasma and their noise is loud and unmistakable. They are powerful with magic. She tries many, many she won't ever use, many she doesn't need and she offers them or she leaves them at the shrine she built or at places where The Void is strong.

She doesn't keep half of her carvings. Only ten bones, she brings with her.

The Raven doesn't tell her on which bones she can carve. Emily understood. By respect, she only uses the ones of dead birds she finds. She cleans them until they are polished, always thanks the creature who allowed her to carve. She doesn't really know the rules of magic but she understands some.

She asks for a city that has disappeared for long, and they give her directions. She isn't surprised when she only finds a plain, and ashes. Stones eroded by time. She has seen it.

He follows her during all this time, and she doesn't ask to know more (The Raven is grateful).

_'Five miles to the South. Follow a path of stones and vines, and whenever you find a crossing always take left. Never right.'_

“What will I find?”

_'A witch. A long time friend.'_

She could be afraid. She could not go. He never gave any order to his marked.

She doesn't hesitate a second, and she always makes sure to stop at each crossing to take the left path. He didn't tell her what would happen if she didn't, but it would not end up well. Emily understood.

When she finds the witch, they are far more different that what she imagined.

\-------

The witch is not one person, but two carbon clones. They know her, The Raven has told them.

They spend a long long time discussing with an artist, so they can all be sure of what they want. What they are ready to tell, and what she is open to listen.

And then Emily starts to learn witchcraft.

Her first lesson is on carving. Of course, she already knows the basics, but they show her how to give a certain amount of power on her creations. How to manipulate bones with particular intentions, to make a charm that would answer exactly to her wishes.

“If you want to create runes to give you immediate abilities, you have to carve them at shrines. When you carve, you drain the Void, and the more powerful the rune is, the closer to the Void you have to be.”

Her second lesson is on potions.

“This one is not really witchcraft, but useful nonetheless. When you know the plants well enough, you can make some interesting things, especially if you add a bit of power in. I have an ointment that can heal any wound in no more than an hour. Potions have many uses. Protection, repellents, enhancers… You should probably make one to strengthen your link to the Void temporarily. It can always be useful.”

They don't tell her of poisons because they know she doesn't want. If she needs, she'll have to find on her own.

Her third lesson is on spells, and runic magic. She learns that of course, the bones are not the only places where runes have power. Specific sigils are required for certain spells, and all of them have a very particular meaning.

“Some sigils are universal, but most are not. You have to make your own. Always keep a straight mind while doing so. Their meaning must be devoid of any contradiction and impossible to misinterpret, or the spell will not work.”

She practices on objects without value, and learns how to make them come to her, no matter how far they can be. She practices on the witch with two bodies, and grants them immunity against poison. Then, she learns how to change her face. She finds spells quite easy to practice. The witch doesn't tell her she can use spells to harm. It is not Emily's ways. The artist doesn't care how useful her abilities could be in combat or if her intent was to hurt. It is not something she does, or would do.

It isn't exactly about morality, but at the same time it's only it. She is not one to take lives.

(She didn't refuse Rulfio only because she preferred to be independent. She doesn't want to be an assassin. If she needs somebody removed, well, she knows several gangs and it's good enough. She could also scare them. Killing is excessive, and not striking enough. If she needs for a message to be broadcast across the city, quietly slitting one's throat is not the most efficient way.)

Her final lessons in on rituals. Long, complicated spells that need far more than runic magic.

“Be careful of these ones. They are dangerous, and can easily turn against you. I used to have only one body” two mouths tell her. “And I think our mutual friend is not fond of them.”

An understatement, Emily thinks, considering he died because of one; but she doesn't know all. Neither does the witch. The last one has found his body, but the god never answered about it. His death was only the first part of the ritual.

(They say whoever finds the heart of The Raven will be granted everything they wish. A myth. His heart has long decomposed since.)

Emily will not find his body. To appear as a human, The Raven needs the corpse. It will remain in the Void for now on. Nobody else need to know about the ritual made on him.

“All living things have a name. If you want to include anything, or anyone in a ritual, you need at least their name. Without it, you cannot do anything.”

The witch explains what kind of rituals she can perform. Rituals on her specifically, rituals on somebody else, rituals involving more than one party.

“You could completely change bodies, or give yourself something close to immortality. But don't fool yourself, the Void will always find a way to take you. Each life starts and ends with it.

An impossible idea starts to make its way in Emily's mind. She waits a lot, until she has no reason to stay anymore, and when she's sure there is nothing left to learn and there will be no loss if the witch reject her, she asks.

“Do you know his real name?”

“No. No, you don't involve him in your magic. You hear me? He is beyond you, and you have no idea how much power he has. Whatever you're thinking, forget it. You won't get his name anyway. Nobody knows it, not even himself.”

So Emily drops the matter, and thanks the witch.

\-------

When she comes back at her shrine, she starts carving a rune. Without any intent. She channels the hugest power she can think of inside.

And she uses it.

 _'What do you hope to accomplish?'_ he asks, appearing at her side. He has never stopped watching her. Emily is a strange one.

“I don't know. You choose.”

 _'I don't.'_ he answers and when she shoots him a surprised look, he adds _'The runes never give a power they weren't created for.'_

“What happens when you carve without intent?”

_'You cannot. It is always there, even if you don't think of it, even if you don't voice it.'_

When she activates it, Emily discovers she can now give life to her paintings. No matter what is displayed or where, anything can become real. A tree, a whale, a dead man with a broken spine.

_'You are the only one who knows how to create. Use it well.'_

“Wait!” she calls, understanding he is about to leave, then stops herself.

He stares at her and he knows, exactly what she has in mind. He knows, what is impossible to accomplish.

 _'Corvo Attano.'_ he tells her, a long time later. _'My former name.'_

\-------

Emily comes back to Gristol, eventually. She takes her ten charms, and collects stones on her shrine, as many as she can (they are nowhere else than in Pandyssia). The branches, she can find anywhere else. She leaves her shrine mostly intact, for others to worship on. It wouldn't be fair to destroy it, both for her god and the other believers.

(The rare bones she still had, she leaves on the boat. The next days, sailors find a stash of charms with ruffles of feathers and they understand the gift, so they thank the Void, and its chosen.)

The first day, Emily lays low. She brings back all the materials she needs, scavenges some copper wire. She decided to add a new touch, and builds her new shrine in the middle of her apartment. It is based mostly on branches, tied with the wire. She arranges the stones so they circle the altar, and asks without asking for feathers. The Raven gives his.

The shrine is unlike any other, and Emily rests her charms on a puddle of blue feathers.

She needs the help of a blacksmith to complete it so she leaves again, for the streets this time. And finally understands what is wrong with the city.

Dunwall is always dark. With guards roaming the streets, and rats growing anywhere that isn't on the former's patrols, the city was already corrupt and decomposing a few months ago.

But the rats never were so much.

There wasn't a… quarantine before. Barricades, buildings closed for housing the plague? That's new. And the loud machines cracking with electricity, that's new too. Emily really doesn't like it. They seem dangerous.

She changes her mind when she finds a plague victim. Suddenly, she understands what the machines are for. They never… attacked people before.

How come is the situation so much worse than only a few months ago? Emily thought they were searching for a cure! They even made a huge fuss about the Lord Protector leaving Dunwall to ask the other Isles. So what, they found nothing?

Some things really make no sense. Emily sees writings on streets, hears rumors. Announcements about 'the Lord Regent'.

Long live the Empress, huh? May her soul rest peacefully?

“If only that damn fool hadn't killed the Empress.”

She refuses to admit it. She refuses to see why the city has taken a turn to its worst.

But when Burrows replies to her letter for Jessamine with his new seal, Emily can no longer deny. Her sister is dead.

Assassinated.

\-------

_'Llyr Reese will have no visitors, for your own safety.  
\- Hiram Burrows'_

There is little doubt in her mind that the Lord Protector doesn't have much link with Jess's death. From what she remembers, the man is annoyingly apathetic and has a deplorable habit of talking way too much, often to speak nonsense or vague statements. But more importantly, he never really had political ambition. And why kill her where he could be seen? There is nothing to gain in regicide if you get arrested right on; which was obviously going to happen if the Lord Protector was the only possible culprit.

Perhaps Llyr isn't the brightest man she's ever met, but he certainly isn't this idiotic.

There is something in common with the plague and Jess's murder. There has to be, both occurred at a time too close to each other for it to be a coincidence. A lethal illness spreads, and suddenly a bodyguard murders his charge? No, that makes no sense.

(Emily doesn't think that perhaps it is her, who is over-thinking. That perhaps this is it, and Llyr really murdered Jess. That there may not be a huge conspiracy behind it all. It can't be. It would be too unfair, for her sister to die for nothing. Without any intent behind.)

She plays her part. _Emily_ is an informant, and has contacts everywhere. Even in the City Watch. Even within the Tower's personnel.

Her spies don't want to tell, obviously. But Emily can be very persuasive.

Money and a little bit of witchcraft work wonders to convince somebody or make them fear well enough.

Apparently Llyr was alone with the empress when she died, which is why nobody could protect her. Emily doesn't believe it. She knows the layout of the Tower better than any guard, almost as well as the Lord Protector. She did trespass… once or twice. But it was never to hurt Jess in any way.

A guard tells her he was near the gazebo before the Spymaster told him and his Captain to leave the Empress alone with Llyr.

And most of all, a maid who worked just near at the time speaks of a strange thing she saw. Figures on a rooftop, suddenly vanishing into nothing and then sounds of battle. They all heard. But if Llyr was alone, whose blade cross his?

(The common folk talk, but only to the ones willing to listen. They know they are replaceable. They do not speak of suspicion, in fear of losing the only thing that makes them a living.)

There is only one answer. Emily knows what a man can do with particular abilities, and she would recognize this description everywhere. The sense of wrongness when noticing somebody dissolving, only to reappear somewhere near.

Daud and his whalers are assassins, after all.

\-------

She has no real way to confirm her suspicions, not without talking to one of them. And it is the last thing she wants. Yet, she finds herself in front of one in the following weeks.

It is no surprise. She has been expecting them. It was never rare for Rulfio to drop in and listen about what she heard. Still, Emily didn't think they would show their faces so soon. Not after Jess. They know, of course they do, everybody knows she is a Kaldwin. How did they imagine she would react?

“I heard you're finally back. You've been away so long Burrows thought this was an abandoned apartment and filled in so it would be barricaded. I had to send proof it wasn't.”

“How generous of you.”

Probably not in this way.

The painting is ready. She has been waiting to use it – and the others too, in case they are needed. She only needs the mark, to activate it.

Rulfio doesn't even notice her hand clenching, barely sees until a crow with blue feathers settles on her shoulder. Then, the empty vessel starts flying around him, forcing him to step back, and he doesn't look too reassured.

“What is the matter?”

He doesn't answer. She doesn't ask why he came. It would be her, who would need information after leaving for almost six months.

“I thought he was a good friend with the lots of you. Giving you all these powers… It must be great, your transversal. Perfect to leave a crime scene, isn't it?”

The whaler looks confused for a few seconds. They had this talk before after all, she knows he has never seen the god. And will never, her creation has no soul. It is merely a show.

It works well enough. The assassin obviously hesitates between feigning oblivion, and showing respect. The Raven doesn't appear for anybody. And even for his marked, few are the ones he stays around. Daud is not one of them.

“But you, you don't get to be invisible. Don't you know? Some people do look at the rooftops.”

The man flinches and Emily gets her answer. So he was present.

(She has one guard in Coldridge. It took a lot of frightening to convince him to talk to Llyr for her, but eventually he took the bait. She has his name, and once witches have names you cannot really stop them. Llyr didn't talk. Suspicion, probably. Everything he says can be used against him, so he merely gave some vague speech on the rooftop near the gazebo, how close it was and how visible from the gazebo. The hint is clear enough)

“You killed her.”

“Emily-”

“ **You killed her!** ” she yells, and the mockery of the god disappears on her back. “I know you did. Of course I do. What did you think? There are no secrets in this city.”

And perhaps it sounds a bit too personal, but she isn't blaming the whalers as a whole. She isn't blaming Daud. She is blaming him, who knew who listened to everybody, who collected every information she could find, and still executed the job.

“Do not come anywhere near here ever again. **Get out.** ”

She cannot handle to be in his presence for any other second. It is all starting to come out, the regret, the grief, the guilt because she worked with these assassins for years and she knew, she knew exactly and perhaps if she had told Jess about them this would never have happened. Perhaps by concealing this, she caused her sister's death. An accomplice, at least.

And she _cannot bear_ the thought.

So she activates the rest of her paintings, and the whaler suddenly finds himself attacked by what seems like a hundred crows, swarming him with violence normal crows wouldn't have. But these ones are hers and they have no soul but are driven by the aim to destroy anything she summons them against.

There is no possible reasoning when talons and beaks want nothing more than blood and flesh, so Rulfio has no choice but to flee.

\-------

Later, she considers it was an awful move to turn hostile against him immediately. If they know her intentions immediately, she'll have a much lesser opportunity. And she wants retaliation. Payment for what they've done. She wants blood, for the one they spilled.

But at the same time, she **hates** the idea of taking a life. She never really had to consider it before, but now that she's really confronted to this situation, she finds out she's not sure she can do it.

Ruining somebody was one thing. Destroying reputations, trespassing, helping criminals was one thing. Killing however…

She does not want her hands to murder, but she wants their blood. Daud's, at the very least. And hiring somebody else is not enough. It is a personal debt, she needs to settle. One stranger doing it is not enough at all.

For weeks, The Raven watches her hesitating. Planning, watching with the greatest care, taking notes. The whalers. Their patrols. Their territory, their base of operation. All the ways to infiltrate them, all the ways to leave. The inside. Where elixirs and remedies can be found, if there is a fight. How to enter Daud's office without being seen, and how to exit.

Their powers. The way they fight. How many they are, and how many come when a distraction is caused.

It is what she does. Collecting intelligence. It is what she's best at.

And they don't see her. Of course they don't. Only a Void's gaze could uncover her, and she is careful. For all their skills and habits, the whalers are the same as the guards. They don't look up. They believe the rooftops are the highest one can walk.

But Emily does not walk among them.

Her creations don't last longer than fifteen minutes, but they keep her **up** and she knows them well enough to be aware when she needs to go down, draw another one.

What works best for her is that, as serious of a threat she gave, Rulfio has not taken it to be applied to all whalers. The first two weeks, they were more wary, more in general to search around their whole territory just in case they found an enemy, but then they forgot about her.

She did not.

They underestimate her, and for this, she wants their blood even more.

Then she remembers the dreadful feeling she had the first time she “accidentally” stabbed somebody. And it wasn't even a lethal wound.

Emily cannot decide what is the best for her to do. She cannot decide what she truly wants, and if she can do it.

The Raven watches her consider. A spell to harm? Is she really ready to perform a hex? A ritual?

_'No. Too dangerous.'_

The Raven watches her think. She cannot do it. She has to. She wants to. But does she?

 _'Their blood or their life?'_ (By her, or somebody else?)

Then, he believes she needs a different choice.

_'There is somebody I'd like you to meet. You'll have to wait for him, though.'_

\-------

He hovers over her, resting on her arm when she offers it. He wants to say something, but he does not exactly know what.

_'So you're really leaving.'_

And she laughs. “Dunwall was not for me, I guess.”

 _Emily_. The unknown artist. The exceptional informant. The ruthless witch.

Emily.

Sailing across undiscovered lands, continents she's seen in the Void. Made captain of the ship of smugglers, by scaring off the whole crew. Black magic, they all whisper. The Void, some recognize, and they avoid her. They are not ready for the vast emptiness.

Void takes what it wants, so they try not to make it want them.

_'I have a parting gift.'_

The rune that materializes in her hand is made of human bones, he tells her, and is forged with the power of the Void.

“Who made it?”

_'A noble, known as Granny Rags in her time. Here, she was only Vera Moray. She died, a few years ago.'_

Emily does not seem to understand.

_'This rune… it does not complete its intent. It is the Void. It was made as a gift, and thus it returns as a gift.'_

“A gift from the Void.” she says, dubious.

 _'I,'_ and by I, he means him, Corvo Attano, The Raven, the human made deity, the Void's representative that is less than he should be. _'am not the Void.'_

She nods, bowing her head in apology.

“So what does it do?”

_'I told you, it conceals the Void. What is open to me, at least.'_

“How is that possible?”

_'Because I am lesser than the Void.'_

Then, she understands. And, he asks her to keep the gift for herself. It should not return to the Void, nor should it go to anyone else.

“So if I use this rune, I will be as powerful as you?”

_'Not exactly. You need to be in the Void, for your abilities to be as effective.'_

And he understands exactly what she's thinking again.

_'Emily. You cannot do that. Nothing in the Void answers by name. And you cannot restrict your own source of magic, even if it is to protect. Especially, if it is to protect something inside of it.'_

“So what can I do?”

_'You can protect yourself from the Void. My favor allows you to.'_

She thinks, and thinks, and eventually she finds out the first ritual she'll try. A part of the Void. A safe place in the entity that swallows life.

“Is this a farewell?” she asks as she sets foot on land, abandoning the ship.

_'Only if you want it to be.'_

“No.” she answers without hesitation. “I'd rather it wasn't.”

(Later, he'll propose her a semblance of immortality. She'll refuse.)

(Much later, she'll be six feet under and legends would run about her. An artist, an informant, a witch. A criminal. Sister of an Empress. She murdered for her, in some tales. She made all the assassins burn, others say.)

(Centuries later, and years before, a new deity will appear in the Void. Judgment, some will call her. Mercy, other will. Wisdom, they'll all agree.)


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "i'll update quickly" i said. "within two weeks!" i said. "2k should be enough for this prompt!"  
> I cannot anymore. take me out of this hell.  
> the longest chapter has yet to come

Daud is anything but wise. A boy introduced to the knife way too early, he walks a path few would wish. Most of his skills resolve in assassination. Even after leaving the men who took him from Serkonos for good, there is hardly anything else he can imagine himself doing.

He tries, for a time. Walks in the Academy like another natural philosopher, like a Gristol born. The entry tests are far easier than he thought.

He doesn't stay long. The whispers are making him sick. There would be merit in becoming a scientist as brilliant as the Dunwall men who grew with books, but it not the merit he wants. Defying the narrow vision of the ones running the Academy would be glorious if anybody was backing him up. But as a fact, whether he stays or not, his name will not be remembered. And his presence in the Academy will not change Dunwall's view of Serkonan natives.

It is not the life he wants anyway. He does not want to live around jealous philosophers who will constantly look over him, talk over him and poison his every thought until he becomes as paranoid as them; merely because of his birth place.

And they do not even know the worst they could use against him. Living in Serkonos is nothing compared to being raised by outlaws. He was barely fifteen when he killed his first man. To consider he'd be as smart as Dunwall's best and brightest would be insulting, if they knew how much blood had run through his hands already (it already is, a Serkonan commoner in the Academy is already shocking enough in itself).

Academic life is definitely not for him.

There is nobody to judge his origins in the blood business.

\-------

It is when he takes to traveling that Daud hears about The Raven. Dunwall is a shitty city, he claims, before deciding that Gristol as a whole isn't as grand as the book say. For all the tales about Gristol being the biggest and the best isle of the Empire, Daud doesn't find it to his liking. But then he wouldn't be welcome anywhere, so he adjusts. Travels around the isle, to find the best place to stay. As in, the place where people would be more open to call for assassins.

And in his search, he finds something unexpected. A shrine. And another. They don't look similar at all.

The third, he doesn't find as much as builds it himself. One worshiper told him. Spoke marvels about a blue bird flying through the skies, hovering above oblivious heads. A raven, a legendary one.

A god, came from the Void itself.

Daud doesn't truly believe but he is curious and figures out there is no harm in trying.

When nothing answer at the shrine, he figures out it was utter bullshit and forgets about the legend. The blue raven clearly only belongs to myths. Nothing could prove its existence, and if it won't appear then it's safe to assume there is no deity in the Void.

But, of course, the universe loves to prove him wrong. The further he goes, into the other Isles, the more he hears about this so called god. In Tyvia, they don't speak of the blue bird. They still have a lot of traditions, to appease the Void. Spells from apparent witches, bones from crows, as long as they can protect themselves from the malevolence of the Void. They are afraid.

Daud finds it strange, but not more than Morley's traditions. They hate, not the Void but a god with no name, and try everything they can to repel it.

Daud is a skeptic, because the believers are very few and the Abbey never mouthed a word about a blue raven, but it doesn't stop him from visiting the rare shrines he finds. One or two go along with strange bone artifacts. The others are empty. Nobody ever answers.

Yet when he comes back to Dunwall – he should have expected it, Serkonos holds too many memories and not enough in the same time, and if he has to stay in Gristol it would be in Dunwall – he starts hearing more about the legend.

The Abbey condemn the Void, and anything linked to it. But underneath, there are believers. Worshipers, of the Void's deity. And they give him a name. The Raven. Not all know it, few are ready to build a shrine, fewer even are open to talk of their beliefs. But it comes to Daud's ears nonetheless. Tales of ancient powers offered to those marked by the blue bird. Could be useful.

Perhaps if he makes his own shrine, a good one, The Raven will finally appear.

Eventually, it becomes a priority for him to learn how to build a proper one, to try again to call on the deity.

But the Void is protective and sends him a warning by throwing him into a (supernatural) scene ; a corpse on the ground and hundred of crows looming over it, picking at it, scratching the skin. And in the middle, a human figure impossible to discern with all the birds surrounding it, slowly eating the body.

A long stare is all Daud can manage, frozen in the spot. Until the human turns towards him and the assassin can feel eyes on him but he only sees the yawning abyss, a bottomless pit, a pitch black void ready to swallow him entirely, to erase him and everything he is until his existence is nothing, nothing at all.

The crows suddenly swoop on him but the next second all living beings scatter quicker than it should be possible, and between the birds, the humanoid's glare burns Daud. He's chilled to the bone, left with nothing but a long scratch on his forearm. 

Daud stops seeking and the next time he visits his shrine, The Raven comes to him. Exactly like a spirit from the Void, appearing within a second on the altar, and staring at the human with the abyssal eyes he has already seen.

_'Shrines are… not supposed to look like that.'_

The tone is awkward, almost embarrassed and Daud feels vexed. It mustn't be so bad, since The Raven still showed himself.

“Well if you left me with a book to learn how to build them, perhaps it would have been better.”

There is a long, stretching silence and Daud starts to wonder why the deity even appeared.

As a fact, The Raven doesn't really know. There is an understanding, of what the human wants and what he could give. What such a man could do with power from the Void. Nothing but carnage. Still, the god finds himself intrigued. When he looks into the Void and its knowledge, there are many paths the assassin can take. Even more if a mark is given.

Many paths he cannot see, many paths that could turn to be very interesting.

(A lot of them end with Daud's ruin)

And more important, many paths that would change the world as humans knew it. The Raven seeks novelty, change, interest (and stability, but this Daud cannot bring).

_'Why do you worship?'_

“I don't.”

And this, this is the most interesting thing. Daud wants power, to kill. He does not pray for it. He demands. Still, there is a form of respect. Probably underlying fear. The Raven intended to scare the human off, but here he is.

It is not quite arrogance that is displayed but at the same time it is exactly it and The Raven finds it endlessly amusing. This one is not interested in magic, only power. To kill. It goes against what the god searches in his marked ones, and at the same time it is exactly it. There is not much difference between meaningless murder and brutal revenge.

(Marking the assassin is, in itself, an act of revenge. A test. Giving to a man who only spill blood, endless power over everybody else. **What will you do? How will you use it? What kind of mark, will you leave?** The unanswered questions are what makes it so very interesting.)

 **Do you think you won't fall to somebody driven by the consequences of your actions?** The Raven does not ask, and so Daud does not find out.

Instead, the god has the human hold out his hand as the hundred crows peck at his flesh, to trace the mark of the Void.

It is only two weeks later that Daud can flex his hand, and there is an odd sense of satisfaction in watching him bleed.

\-------

_'Daud.'_

The man is at a shrine, a very improper one of course but nobody knows how to build a correct one and The Raven certainly won't be giving tips. However they choose to represent the altar matters little anyway. He prefers it when they are made of Pandyssian stone, but he'll answer to the others as well. As long as the person who asks is worth his presence.

Sometimes he doesn't… appear, but acts nonetheless. For the ones left with nothing, the abused and the poor, for whom revenge isn't a concrete thought for how unreachable it is, he helps slightly. **Weakness** , the Void hisses.

But he does not show himself because they do not shine.

Daud certainly does.

(Though for a strange reason, his success awakens a desire of destruction throughout the Void.)

“Why do you give your mark this way?” he asks, bluntly. Unamused, but still intimidated. He's seen, on the few men he's taken with him, how the mark can be shared. Through a simple tattoo. Not the same wound he received at all.

 _'You gave your power to others.'_ The Raven replies, ignoring his question.

“Does it bother you?” He's been killing for years, this is not their first conversation. Daud has taken a few men with him recently. The arcane bond was completely accidental, the assassin never knew its existence before. But it's possible it has offended the god, something he'd rather avoid. The Raven turned out to be something completely different from what he was expecting, but it holds a power he cannot even imagine. Daud would prefer not being torn apart by the god.

He doesn't understand. The creature in front of him, he cannot understand. The Raven is not as malicious as… simply alien. Daud cannot make sense of its actions. He doesn't find any other marked so he can't manage to get an answer, but the mark in itself seems more like a bad omen, a promise of destruction than anything else.

The Raven does not seem to be the cannibal humanoid, but it does not mean it is any less dangerous.

Daud has seen it, always next to him when he was in grave danger. Always looking strangely satisfied each time he got injured.

The silence stretches, and for a second Daud thinks it's the end of the conversation before The Raven finally replies.

 _'… No.'_ as long as they don't have too much power, the god doesn't add. _'Careful. Letting the wrong people too close may cause irremediable harm.'_

“You'd like that.”

The god doesn't deny.

\-------

The mark is an open wound. It does not bleed, not anymore, but it throbs. It is a constant, grounding pain in Daud's hand, then arm.

Horror can not even describe the feeling when he notices the mark spreads. At first, it is a very slow process. Within five years, the mark barely covers his wrist. The Raven never comments on it. Over time, the bird starts to appears less, and talk even less than it used to. The assassin suspects it found another plaything.

Surprisingly, his powers grow with the mark. His abilities become more powerful, and he can now completely change his body into the one of a wolf. His men share the powers (but their own mark does not grow, nor does it ache).

Then it suddenly accelerates.

When the mark reaches his shoulder, he brings the matter to the god. His whole arm hurts and it's becoming more and more difficult to stand. Thankfully he doesn't fight with his left arm.

“You never told me it was supposed to spread.” he hisses, and reproach is clear in his voice.

_'You are using it too much. The Void is not meant to be pulled by several men through only one mark. The Void takes from you in equal amounts.'_

“Wait what does that mean? Can't you make your mark hurt less?”

The Raven spends an awfully long time hovering over him, and Daud knows he is being mocked.

_'It's the price. The price for the mark.'_

“So, the more it spreads, the more parts of me are lost to the Void?”

The abyss stares back at him, and everywhere Daud looks he can only find his own end.

_'You belonged to the Void from the moment I marked you.'_

The bird smiles and it is all threatening. There is a cold chill. This creature could destroy him. The god wants his doom.

“Your mark is a curse.”

It was a mistake, he never should have sought a legend. He paid too much attention to a thing forgotten for a good reason. Now he understands the rituals of protection against the Void, the traditions to repel the Void's deity. The Raven is not a god to worship. It's a danger in itself, an urge to destroy all who find it.

 _'Not necessarily.'_ and it is the only clue the god will ever give.

If he is never to be satisfied in his existence within the Void, then he won't grant it to anybody else.

If Daud decides only to do violence with The Raven's power, then he will find no answer.

It is a huge disappointment. Daud could have been a lot, so much more than what he is but instead he keeps clinging to his way, to his violence. Refusing to question it, even after the mark has started to spread. Even though each time he uses his powers, it makes his hand burns. Even after unspoken threats of ruin, after ignorance and harm.

For a second, years (what does it matter), The Raven felt strangely drawn to the human. A resemblance he could not express, nor let Daud discover.

But Daud is not used, he is not abused. Nothing prevents him from changing, except himself.

How boring. A missed opportunity. He could have shone, he could have done so much. Instead, his name is a harsh whisper within the city, saturated with fear and anger. Daud, the assassin.

Daud has had his power, and he clung to it. How very mundane. The Raven expected better from his marked.

He is not satisfied with what the assassin does thanks to the Void. The man must not forget what allows him so much. Why he was chosen.

Perhaps Daud will find out. If he doesn't, the Void will swallow him whole in a few years.

\-------

For a while, Daud stills. Slows. His contracts are less, his use of the mark is even lesser. Commands his whalers to only use the magic in emergency, as well.

He thinks it will slow the spreading of the mark. The arrogance. Nobody outsmarts the Void. No human can escape its pull. And The Raven is an extension of it, meant to carry its will.

(Impossible to determine, however, if it is him or the Void who is so dissatisfied at Daud.)

No matter. Daud turned his back and is trying to leave, so The Raven pulls harder.

The mark spreads even faster, and Daud drops the magic ban. He understands it doesn't work.

The mark covers both of his arms, and his neck.

He tries to contact his god. The Raven does not answer.

He makes a second shrine, visits more in Dunwall. The Raven does not answer.

“What do you want?” he whispers, more and more.

 **Everything** , The Raven does not answer. **Your life. Your destruction.**

“Answer me!”

The god laughs where the human cannot hear. How amusing. Daud will have nothing, nothing at all. It was not for this purpose that he was marked, but if it must end in this way then it will. If it must end by Daud's pathetic demise, The Raven won't interfere anymore. It is not the show he expected, not what he _wanted_ , but it will have to be enough.

“Take that away.” the assassin asks, with a hint of desperation.

**No.**

And so the years fly, never merciful to Daud. The mark is a constant pain, through all his upper body. He rarely participates to jobs anymore. And the bird with abyssal eyes does not come back.

Daud stops searching. Bitterness settles in.

(He understands he lost his last bet, and made his worst mistake.)

(Later, he figures out he can do much worse.)

\-------

Even without the conversations, Daud remains intriguing, at the very least. He makes a perfect person to observe. It is as if the man is running unconsciously to his own destruction. The Raven finds him very entertaining to watch (not in Earth's time, of course. Earth's time is just too slow). Most of the time, there is nothing but the violence of a man who uses his power to abuse, just like so many would do, just like the ones he drowned and would drown again.

And in the middle there are a few occurrences that are just so great (as in terrible for the man but exactly what the god wants). A few occurrences that show again, just why Daud was marked. He does not make good use of the power, but he uses and in such a great (as in grandiose, frightening) way.

The last one, he observes. From start to end. From the moment Daud receives the letter, to the moment an Empress's blood spills on the floor. It was foretold. Many futures where he wouldn't, more where he would die before. But the most show Daud, an Empress kneeling before him, and blood shed. Sometimes, it is Daud's. Sometimes, it is the Lord Protector who bleeds out.

Most of the futures depict a job, executed perfectly. The victim stabbed cleanly in the core artery. And a blame, pinned on the person who was to protect.

Here is what happens:

Llyr is back, two days early. Just in time to give terrible news to his Empress. The fight with the Whalers gets ugly. None of them expected having to face one of the best swordsman of the Isles. Daud has to change his plans quickly, but he doesn't back out. Instead, he goes straight for his target, letting his men take care of Llyr. Jessamine Kaldwin shouts, tries to escape. As a result, Daud does not strike at the place he wanted. The Empress dies just the same, a blade through her heart, after throwing one last look at her bodyguard. As soon as he is released from the tether, the Lord Protector goes straight after the Whalers, who have to flee. Three of them are lost to the fight. As soon as Daud is gone, the Spymaster and the guards run in the gazebo, alerted by Llyr's screams. And they accuse him.

Later, when they are all done with the autopsy of Jessamine Kaldwin, The Raven comes before her.

What a mess. A shame. He had huge plans for her heart. But it is pierced through, too damaged. It could have made a great relic. An artifact like no other.

Instead, he takes her necklace, and paints blue patterns across her skin. A ritual. The opportunity of brief consciousness for a dead soul.

(They come to an agreement. Her empire will not be drowned and forgotten. She will leave a part of her soul into her necklace, as a guidance for the marked. She asks for Llyr's life, and he refuses to promise. But his intent is the same. Llyr has too much potential to be wasted. Nothing else can be discussed, so she returns to the Void, the great crowd of the dead, and he returns to the Void, the vast, dark expense that is as much him as where he stays.)

Later even, as the humans discover strange symbols tattooed in the Empress's skin, The Raven thinks. He allowed it to happen. He enabled it, even (there is a reason Llyr came back two days early, and it is in no way due to _luck_ ). He could have prevented it (for Emily). He could have done nothing (for himself).

Llyr would have followed the tyrannic rule of Hiram Burrows, would have helped destroying Jessamine's government, would have supported corruption while the Empire was crumbling, devoured by the rats. But a shame, such a shame that would have been. The Raven hates wasted opportunities, and such a disappointment Daud has been. He wants to see someone burning with the same fire, he wants to see something. _Better_.

He wants **more** , and **more** , and the Void does not give and his marked do not provide.

So he enables the murder of Jessamine Kaldwin, and the imprisonment of Llyr Reese.

He enables Daud's regret, eating him from the inside out, Emily's grief, prompting her to resolve to methods she never used before, and Llyr's anger, fueling his desire to go forward, to take himself back, to burn those who robbed everything from him.

The Raven wonders, will he attempt to build pyres in the greedy waters of the Void?

No one ever called him kind.

\-------

_'Llyr is coming for you.'_

A surprise, for him mostly, that he would show himself again to Daud. The man rots for months. He has grown from boring to aggravatingly useless. At least the chaos he created with his murders fueled the Void, allowed it not to starve. It was not enough but it was still something. Now he no longer gives. The Raven does not appreciate when the ones who belong to the Void reject it, deny it offerings.

He appreciates even less the way the assassin gave up. He did not even try to understand once the god left. If only the man did not have such a thick skull he might be great (as in interesting) instead of simply frustrating. But he is fair to his marked. Well, most of them.

“Martin told me. Apparently he didn't take kindly to your new favorite ruining the Abbey. He also said to be careful of you, but that I knew that already. Why did you mark him?” Daud frowns.

The Raven does not answer before such a long time Daud thinks he's just going to leave like that. 

_'To have a closer look when he'd fall.'_

“Of course you would. Is this because he's an Overseer?” his tone is half incredulous, half defeated. Finally, he learnt.

 _'It is not.'_ It is exactly it, and Daud knows it. Though not for the exact same reason than he thinks. The god does not hate Overseers as much as he hates all the religious. Important figures or not. The believers, he tolerates. The worshipers, he cannot.

No matter whom they pray for.

_'The Lord Protector runs towards you with no other purpose. Are you afraid?'_

Daud refuses to say anything.

_'Daud the assassin. The hunter of men. You won't even see him coming. For all your skills, and those of your men, you won't ever see him coming.'_

“Why are you here?” the assassin says instead.

 _'To see an old friend.'_ this time, when The Raven smiles, there are no teeth. Just gaping emptiness. This shape is borrowed from the Void, and is more abyss than material.

 _'I see you shouting already._ “Where is your god?”. _Do you really thinks he relies on me?'_

“What do you mean?”

_'Llyr didn't come only with a blade. He is armed with secrets, information about your base, about you. The plan is not even his. Two marked pitted against you.'_

“Who” Daud growls, and he is so sure it is one of his men the god laughs.

 _'Emily. She used to be an informant of yours, you know. You will not go after her.'_ the god replies almost plainly, and sometimes it's slightly frightening, the way The Raven can turn simple statement into clear threats. The assassin would comment if he wasn't so sure the other could kill him for just pointing out getting attached to his marked considering how much he obviously **cares** is stupid.

“They have your favor.” it isn't even a question. Daud is well aware they have it, and he does not.

_'You never understood, did you? It is not about the blood you spill. It is not about the lives you send howling to the Void. It is about who you are. I marked you because you had potential. It was so refreshing, your pride. You were one single mindset, and it was delightful. But you lost, because you do not change. You do nothing to satisfy. I want to see. Your reaction is always the same. Your feelings are always the same. You do not provide.'_

Daud looks positively horrified. As if he finally found the answer to his question. Or rather, as if he finally admitted what he already knew, deep down. The reason why he is left calling a memory, something that no longer comes.

_'Exchange, Daud. You take, so you must give.'_

“The mark-”

_'-spread because you refused to supply. Seized because you turned your back. You're lucky Daud, to live on this day. The Void would have consumed you sooner if not for Llyr. He certainly provides.'_

The assassin is at a loss of a word for a while. He does not understand what is the point. Why the conversation is even happening.

“So what is it? Your favorite is better than me, I get it.”

(He no longer asks what the deity, what the Void wants. There is never any answer.)

_'Such a remarkable individual. I must say, you offered the perfect opportunity, for him to shine even brighter.'_

Daud's eyes widen and he scowls.

“You used me.”

 _'And you haven't, of course.'_ The Raven replied promptly. _'Your powers come from the Void, don't they? Have you ever wondered what it is?'_

“I don't know.”

 _'No living beings do.'_ and there is another smile revealing only emptiness.

If this isn't a hint, he'll be damned. But a hint for what, this is the thing he can never understand. For a god who wants so much, The Raven is unnervingly subtle.

_'The energy is void, and I am half. Every time you call upon the mark, it is not the Void who answers, but me.'_

There is probably a moral, to all of this, but Daud cannot find it. He cannot find the point in tiny details, and why The Raven deems it necessary to reveal them now.

 _'It is not the Void that is dissatisfied.'_ the god sighs, as an answer to his unspoken question. _'You caught my attention, but quickly lost it. Hence the Void coming to claim your body earlier. But I changed my mind about you.'_

The creature in human disguise looms over him and **laughs** , laughs in a way that speaks of chaos, of endings.

_'If he spares you, I will stop the mark's spreading, and its ache.'_

The tone is so menacing Daud is starting to think dying at Llyr's hands might not be so bad. Considering the kind of games the Void and its god play, death might be an easier exit than avoidance (ignoring The Raven has never worked, anyway. How do you overlook a god who wants your destruction?)

_'If he can forgive you for dishonoring him, throwing him to his lowest, and destroying everything, I can forgive you for being such a fool.'_

“You've changed.”

There is obvious surprise in everything he does. This, he never could have expected. A closure to his involvement with magic, an end that didn't involve him burning into ashes. The god he knew never was merciful.

_'You haven't. Regret does not make you any less misguided.'_

“Take back the mark.” he asks, but without a time. If The Raven wants him to face Llyr with the mark, then so be it. But after (if there will even be an after), there will be no more. Daud is done with the mark.

_'No.'_

**You will always belong to the Void.**

And Daud, misled Daud who sees but does not have the sight, who can hear but prefer closing his ears, who stains everything he touches and breaks and tries to put it back together in vain, finally understands.

**This is not mercy.**

And so, no matter the outcome, Daud's memory will remain. He will not be forgotten.

(After his death, and before it, his bones carry strong power. His heart speaks many truths to all those who wishes to hear. And his blood sings, with history, shared between those linked to the Void, from the moment his body came back to the Void until the end.)

His ghost will remain. But himself, won't.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> did i just make the equivalent of creepysider? i think i did


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AY YOU WERE WAITING FOR IT WEREN'T YOU?? well i was at least.  
> i take sooooo long to write when it's not summer i'm sooorrry.
> 
> okay so speaking about the chapters. it's a bit particular. let's say I plan to do more. and i probably will. but I might not, so consider this might be the end. probably not, but maybe.

There is a ghost in his cell.

It is not _human_ , but it cannot be anything else. Not an animal, not anything. Eyes dark, eyes stare at him but he cannot see who they belong to.

An apparition. Something long forgotten.

It is hardly the worst that happens. Coldridge is a harsh, freezing place and sometimes it makes the burns sting less and sometimes the cold burns even more.

And most of the time, Llyr wonders if this could be his death. If it would be easier, easier than the interrogation chamber, the torture for a fake confession, easier than the waiting block where they will have his head chopped off.

So he barely minds the presence of something (someone) otherworldly in the same space than where he lives.

Three months. He has left.

The ghost came around the third week. And now, Llyr has wasted, rotted in this stinking cell for as much time in its company than alone.

It's always there, watching.

Llyr does not know what it wants. He does not manage to understand what anybody wants, why it is so crucial that he admits a murder he didn't commit ; for he will die anyway and Burrows will stay, but he is _here_ and _now_ and still alive.

At least the creature does not ask anything of him.

It does not speak at all. Does not move. Sometimes Llyr cannot help but wonder if it is truly there of if he has been imagining it all along.

But then he turns his head towards the back of his cell. And it is there. Blinking.

Dark eyes like a hole in the world stare at him, and wait. And he waits with them. In silence. For hours, for days, it feels as if the world slows. As if he is alone, with the abyss looking, and him just there.

And he waits.

Two months and a half.

\-------

The ghost has taken to moving. It stands behind him when he slumps over in the dirt. Next to him when he waits, and waits, sat on the poor excuse of a bed. In front of him whenever they move him out of his cell. Whenever they bring in the torturer, the dark eyes stand before, so close it's almost everything he can see. Always so close it should be uncomfortable.

And when they blink, the world disappears. Comes back when this void looks again.

He is drawn to them irresistibly, to a point he cannot explain. Cannot understand. But does not mind.

(A dead man does not escape, but he is not dead yet.)

It cannot possibly not be real. This presence, as if learning from him, cannot be imagined.

When he looks into the abyss, he finds himself disconnected. Separated from the world. He wakes later, in his cell, and he knows what happened because he is so very attentive to his wounds and there are new ones but no matter how much he tries he cannot remember (not that he tries very hard, per se). Being in the room. Leaving the room. It happened. He was staring.

It happened, but not to his mind.

Sometimes, the former Lord Protector feels as if there is a body, connected to this gaze. Sometimes it is completely dissociated from everything.

Soon, when Burrows comes, he does not speak anymore. Does not even urge him to confess. He watches.

Perhaps he knows.

The prisoner has no way of knowing how it looks when his mind is lost to the hole in the world.

Later, Llyr hears him talking to his friend, Campbell. About strange absences during interrogations, about eyes becoming darker, about a force protecting the body from permanent harm.

_Remember the left hand? It was crushed, and a week later perfectly healed._

Llyr does not know what kind of god he has on his side, but he wishes it remains so.

And one morning, the former Lord Protector wakes to find a pool of blood on the floor. And countless blue feathers soaked in it. He does not understand, but when he touches it the pain from his wounds subdues. Disappears.

And them as well.

(Later, Burrows yells.)

\-------

“Who are you?” he asks, everyday, to the dark eyes always looking.

“Why are you here?” follows most of the time.

“What do you want?” is generally the last. He has few, very few questions, for the apparition, for the force watching over him. Would have more if he wasn't so afraid that it would leave. Would have more if he could possibly get used to isolation again. Would have more if only it would truly manifest itself. Stop watching and only.

Llyr still isn't sure if it can be called more than eyes.

Of course, there is never any answer. He barely expected more.

But there is sound now. Since he started asking.

Always hissing, right in his ear.

But the sounds do not come from any human. Too low, melodic and pure, and guttural. Too constant, yet easily overlooked. They erase everything else, and everything else erases them, and sometimes it feels as if they never leave him and sometimes it feels as if they never existed.

Ethereal in a way singing isn't, and Llyr cannot wrap his head around what it is. Sometimes it sounds like screams.

Faint or loud, it does not stop. It never stops. The former bodyguard does not know if he sleeps through them, or with them. It is even more present whenever an Overseer is near.

Since the sounds started, he wakes in the same place, dark place oozing miasma black as the eyes he knows perfectly, every night.

Probably the best personification of this abyss. A gaping emptiness, impossible to grasp, to look at, to focus on. A place that cannot be seen, that cannot be described. That does not exist. A place where himself ceases to live on the same world.

It's. Something different.

And there, he always finds the same feathers. In the middle of the inky effluvium running between his fingers, everywhere around his body, his fingers close on something he can grasp. A constant.

As difficult as it is to hide something in the rags that hang from his frame, Llyr keeps each and every one he wakes with, tucked in his left hand. With each one, he feels lighter. With each one, he burns less and really it's too much, too great of a gift not to take it.

Until they start finding them. And they try taking them.

They cannot.

They just cannot. It cannot be taken from him. The prisoner does not know what causes it, but it is a fact, plain and simple. As much as they can harm him, they cannot touch the gifts made to him.

And it makes Burrows so furious, until Llyr sees the hint of a realization in his expression.

Hushed whispers. Yelling, harsh muttering.

The next time he sees them, they take him in the middle of the night, strap him to the interrogation chair and down one, two buckets of freezing water on him so the lull of sleep evaporates and they start playing a horrible, dissonant music.

The strange sounds that always follow him suddenly fade and it's worse, much worse than the silence, much worse than whatever the sounds were. The presence is no longer here and it is so unnatural, not to be watched, not to stare at the abyss that never, never takes its eyes away.

Llyr does not scream. He cringes, bites his cheek, clenches his fists so hard it makes old wounds re-open. But most of all, he is lost. Stripped from anything that became familiar. There is nothing that is him here, and so without his guardian he is another dead man.

And they do not ask. They do not ask anything from him, they only play their awful music and there is blood, on his tongue on his fingers and everywhere he sees and _what is going on?_

“You have to question, for it to be an interrogation.” he hisses, because it is what he does. Talking. Perhaps it is not the best thing, but he **does not understand** and he tries, he wants to alleviate the pressure building in his head and perhaps force a sword through their chest and perhaps also claw his eyes out until he no longer feels anything, but his hands are bound and he _**cannot**_ -

When he does scream, they stop.

“He is touched by the Void.” he hears the Overseers transmit to the used-to-be Spymaster, and now _that_ makes sense at least.

There was no other reason for the religious faction to be in this place. Especially since they weren't in best terms with the City Watch.

That also explains the sounds.

But the main question remains.

\-------

“Who are you?” he asks, and repeats like a mantra because he is the one who _talks_.

His ghost might have learned how to make sound, but it is not possible to understand, in any way. If it's even meant to. Perhaps it is a language, perhaps it is only a lamentation. A long echoing scream, meant to be forgotten. The melancholic undertones certainly are there.

He asks, as the guards avoid his cell like the plague after hearing him once, twice, talking to the open air. 

(Except one, strange guard. He came when no other would, when no one roamed around. Fidgeting an awful lot. Didn't take much to understand he wasn't supposed to be here, and he was either paid or threatened. Or both. Asked about the murder. About details, when Jessamine fell. The prisoner is wary, does not consider him an ally but figures there is no harm in dropping hints, just in case **somebody** knows. Wouldn't hurt to give a truth. So he speaks in riddles, about the gazebo, about the rooftops and how _close_ they are, how easy it would be to enter the gazebo if somebody were on the rooftops. Doesn't hear more after it.)

They do it even more after hearing some rumors about the Void being strong in him. Which is a ridiculous idea, since the Void is not inside them, quite the contrary; it is them who are inside a huge world made after it. It is the Void, which is outside. Everybody knows that.

They have clear orders not to approach him anyway. He only sees Overseers now.

As if that would make it stop visiting. It stands before him, before them, stares at them just like it stares at him but they do not see for they _restrict the wandering gaze_ , and they do not hear, probably because whatever is in their music weakens the Void, and Llyr does not know if he wants to laugh or scream but he knows it would change nothing because they will not turn to it.

Since the first interrogation, the apparition has not left. No more. It stands, and they keep playing their dissonant music. The more it stays, the less otherworldly, unknown, powerful it looks but still, it stays.

And they _do not notice_.

And then they leave, because what can they do with the Void, what can they do when it has already claimed a man?

Nothing at all.

So they leave but it doesn't and he **can't** so he asks.

“Who are you.”

One month and a half. He counts each and every day, as it grows near, and nearer. One month, one week, six days.

And no answer.

\-------

There is hardly anyone else than Overseers, he sees now. Guards don't come around the block anymore. Even Hiram Burrows, the very man who had him imprisoned, and his accomplice Campbell don't show up. Two weeks. Since they discovered who haunts him, what touches his mind. Perhaps it is his cue to understand the end is nearing.

(Whether it is his or not is unclear.)

The solitary wing. Heh, at least the name is appropriate. Except he is not alone. Not now, not ever.

At least there is somebody (something) to watch his descent, his depravity. It does not matter much to Llyr. After all, it was always clear he would go down without his head before a loud crowd, impatient to see his life flow away. There is, no such thing as dying alone with an entire city watching.

Maybe he is exaggerating, but the prisoner is rather sure the majority is not in his favor. If the insults, spitting and occasional attempted violence between these four walls were any indication, hate seems to be the general feeling towards him. Not that it matters. Two months.

Two months since the solitary block only houses one captive, two months since the only living being around is a presence from the Void (or itself), who does not speak, who only moves in awkward, ethereal motions, and that somehow protects him.

The Void watching over him. Now isn't this funny?

They always ask how, how. They claim he's a witch, a pagan, they accuse him of cursing Jessamine's mind, of corrupting her into choosing him as a protector. Of course, how else was it that he was chosen? He was good with a sword, but obviously he couldn't be as good as the Gristol natives; and he was a foreigner.

A foreigner with no land. With no name. It took a great while, for the court to find something on him. Or rather, not to find anything at all. This was what fascinated the soon-to-be Empress, young child dreaming of over the seas. Nobody bothered to ask where he even came from before her. It was a general consensus that he would be one of the first to leave the Tower anyway. It was already a miracle that he was _in._

A watchman, came five years before out of nowhere, but skilled in sword fight like no one, he quickly rose to the rank of officer, then lieutenant. There were few like him, but he was the one chosen to be within the list of potential Royal Protector. Merit, only. His squad was one of the most efficient, having dealt with important missions including apprehending one murderer from a rather famous gang, for the Abbey to question.

Said murderer suffered from a very quick and unsurprising death, and while it was disappointing not to get any information, _they_ did their jobs.

When Jessamine asked, he was already chosen to stay by her side. So he did not lie.

From beyond the Pandyssian seas, lie other lands. With other languages. And yes he could speak them. And no he wouldn't.

(Now he does. Speaks to the Void with a tongue unknown. Overseers ban him to use it quickly. He ignores them. They cannot take his culture away, just like they won't take his innocence. He will not sign and he will not stop)

How and why he came to Dunwall was never told. But from then, it was known that he was a strange one, from a strange place.

The amount of bullshit they're able to pull could be impressive, if it wasn't obviously wrong. A land of witches, with a desolate landscape and murderous animals? Really?

They call him every name they can. Heretic. Demon. Once they even say he might be a vengeful creature from the Void, coming to throw their world in chaos.

And when it obviously does not work, they leave. For hours, days. A whole week. They just leave. The third day Llyr panics, because what if they just decided to let him starve?

Food and water come during the night. A second time. A third time. Of course, it wouldn't do to have Dunwall's most wanted criminal die of thirst. Always when he is sleeping, so he does not see anyone. They think they can break him through isolation.

But he is not alone. His ghost, his guardian moves and speaks and it-

-can be touched.

It is the prisoner, who initiate the contact. Of course, it does not come as a surprise. The presence was always there, always watching but it is him, who tries, who craves to know more, to learn, to speak the Void's tongue.

It is him, who wants.

He wants. Impossible things; so much. Freedom. Most of all. Revenge. A little. He has never been one to take pleasure in drawing blood, and if he gets out he'll make sure Campbell and Burrows fall, but it is as far as he wants to go. Only them.

And he wants to know. The Void. The person, creature, presence watching over him. Curiosity burns more than anything.

He is rather… disinterested, in whether he'll get to live more or not. Somehow, he has always been. He is more furious of being accused of her murder – when he could never, never harm her, not after swearing to protect her at any cost, not after pledging his own life to hers. No, she was more than him and he would never have laid a hand on her. The prospect of dying is- well a prospect. An event. He might be executed. He might die of illness here, between four walls. Does it matter?

But oh, if he is going to die, he wants to at least meet his guardian. Learn more about it. Thank it, for making the end more bearable.

So he tries. He speaks in his tongue to the abyssal eyes, and they answer with a long lamentation, slow murmurs and croaks. And when the ghost feels more perceptible, more tangible, Llyr tries. And grasps at something that cannot be held. A running, black miasma. But it is something.

It flinches and steps back so quickly it seems less like a movement and more like a wrapping of space and Llyr is almost surprised. That it can be touched. That it would be so unsettled by such a simple thing. That it now looks at him with something that could only be called suspicion, wariness, even when Llyr holds his hands in front of him. Or perhaps he is misreading it all, because the ghost is back next to him so fast and now it feels much more within reach, much more material.

So Llyr just touches it, them. Cradles the unknown, holds an entity from the Void as if his life depends on it.

(Later, when he wakes through black miasma, an indistinct, throaty voice will confess him “the one who walks there is all things”, and the prisoner will wonder, what to make of it.)

His ghost does not walk, but he- neither.

\-------

Warm breath on his neck. Shivers.

It's getting closer. He stopped counting. No more, the questions of when he will be dragged out. Does not matter anymore if it's two days or two weeks; he'll go down anyway. He is still half convinced it will never happen and they'll just let him rot here, one part of him already within the Void. He is not ignorant enough not to understand the implications of the presence watching over him, of the gifts, of the alien place.

_When the Void chooses a human, he cannot be recovered._

Llyr does not mind. He cannot go back to what he was before. It's impossible. He will never be, the protector anymore. If he ever was.

(Jessamine died, after all.)

He is not fool enough not to recognize the powers of these assassins had a certain. Otherworldly nature. He could be angry. He isn't. How could he accuse the Void, his ghost, not to intervene when it's so obvious it is beyond? Beyond their politics, beyond Gristol, beyond the living world.

If the Void wants to protect him, to interact with him he is… glad. It gives a purpose. Something to do, between these four walls.

And if his mind is lost beyond, then so be it. And if he is to die, then so be it. And his guardian is to stay. So be it.

“Who are you?”

The eyes leave the cell, stand just outside. _Your freedom._

“Who are you?”

Darkness reaches for him and he dreams, he wants again. Blood. But too much. _Your revenge._

“Who are you?”

Strange hands, cold, so cold and with an indisputable edge take his own and he feels. He understands. _You. A part, or whole. void. What you want, me to be._

And he thinks, so this isn't the Void. The creature, following him, has a sense of identity.

So if his ghost decides to bestow him the mark he has been seeing, dreaming, for a while, so be it.

And if he can escape, make himself the shadow, and leave with no sound, with no trace…

**_Then he will._ **

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey, thank you everyone who supported me. Honestly, i never expected this to be so long, or to have so much feedback! you all gave me comments, kudos, bookmarks and wow!! thank you so much for it!! I never had so much support, and i can tell you it really warmed my heart to see that so many people liked my lil fic. so yeah. thank y'all.

**Author's Note:**

> also sorry but it's likely i'll put Wear your insides out on a smol hiatus until i'm done with this one


End file.
